[54] The United Nations imposed sanctions on Iraq, following its invasion of Kuwait, on 6 August 1990. Between 1990 and 2003, when the sanctions were lifted following the U.S. invasion, the sanctions caused great misery for the Iraqi population. There was a huge increase in child mortality, with estimates of the number of children who died as a result of the sanctions running in the hundreds of thousands.
[55] André Malraux (1901-1976) was a famous French author identified with existentialism. He is often attributed with saying, ‘The Twenty-first century will be spiritual or it will not be’, although this phrase does not appear in any of Malraux’s published works. The quote is sometimes given with the word ‘mystical’, ‘religious’ or ‘ethical’ in place of the word ‘spiritual’.
[56] This quote is reported to have been uttered by de Gaulle in 1959. Colombey-les-deux-Églises, which means ‘of the two churches’, was de Gaulle’s home town. The full quote reads: ‘Do you believe that the French body can absorb ten million Muslims, who will perhaps become 20 million tomorrow and 40 million after that? If we allow integration, if all the Arabs and Berbers of Algeria were considered as Frenchmen, what would prevent them from coming and settling on the continent where the standard of living is so much higher? My village would no longer be called Colombey-les-deux-Églises, but Colombey-les-deux-Mosquées!’
[57] Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) was a French philosopher and cultural theorist who is regarded as one of the most important postmodernist thinkers. One of his principal ideas is that contemporary reality is made up of concepts and symbols which have no corresponding meaning in the real world, a condition he termed ‘hyperreality’.
[58] Georges-Marc Benamou (1957- ) is a Left-wing French journalist and politician. He was one of the founders of SOS Racisme and was a friend of François Mitterrand. He supported Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2007 elections and afterwards served as an advisor to Sarkozy on cultural matters, arousing much controversy in the role.
[59]Charlie Hebdo is a satirical Left-wing weekly newspaper in France.
[60] PACS, or pacte civil de solidarité, is a type of civil union in France which is available to same-sex couples as well as traditional couples, although it gives fewer rights than does marriage. Although it was still being debated at the time that Faye was writing, in 1999 it was voted into law.
[61] This quote is attributed to King Louis XV of France (1710-1774), who was the last King prior to Louis XVI, who was beheaded during the French Revolution. Louis XV’s irresponsible lifestyle and economic policies are widely considered to have contributed to the Revolution, and his remark is regarded as showing that although he was aware that he was causing problems, he wasn’t concerned since he knew he wouldn’t have to be the one to deal with their consequences.
[62] The Rassemblement pour la République, or Rally for the Republic, was a Right-wing political party founded by Jacques Chirac in 1976 which claimed to represent the legacy of Charles de Gaulle. Chirac was President of France at the time Faye was writing. In 2002 the RPR was replaced by the UMP, or Union for a Popular Movement.
[63] Française des Jeux runs the French national lottery, and also owns betting parlors and on-line games.
[64] Latin: ‘with stronger reason’.
[65]Fahrenheit 451, which is based on Ray Bradbury’s novel of the same name about a future society in which all books have been banned and firemen burn any books which are found, was adapted into a film by the famous French film director François Truffaut in 1966.
[66] The Fédération Internationale de Football Association, or International Federation of Association Football, is the international governing body for football, based in Switzerland.
[67] The Kabyle people are ethnic Berbers from the region of Kabylie in northeastern Algeria.
[68] Zinedine Zidane (1972- ) was the captain of the French national football team that won the 1998 World Cup and the Euro 2000. He retired in 2006.
[69] The policy of jus sanguinis, or the law of blood, holds that citizenship in a nation is a matter of ancestry rather than the location of one’s birthplace. In the German case, this means that a person of German ancestry who is a citizen and resident of another country can become a German citizen, while the children of immigrants who are born in Germany are not eligible to become citizens. Most European states other than France uphold some version of this law.
[70] Latin: ‘bread and circuses’. This refers to any policy that relies on keeping citizens happy by distracting them from the realities of social problems.
[71] Revenu minimum d’insertion, or Insertion of Minimum Revenue, is a type of French social welfare first introduced by the Socialist Party in 1988, which provides money for those who are not working but are not receiving unemployment payments.
[72] A type of boat race.
[73] The Basque pelota is a game similar to tennis, native to the people of the Basque Country, currently in Spain and France.
[74] A palio is a traditional type of athletic contest between neighborhoods in Italian towns, famously involving horse races. There are many although the most famous one takes place in Siena in Tuscany.
[75] Faye undoubtedly means Oktoberfest.
[76]Marianne is a weekly French news magazine which began publishing in 1997.
[77] Taguieff (1946- ) is a French sociologist whose work has focused particularly on the issue of racism. In his writings, he has frequently accused the Nouvelle Droite of being racist due to its rejection of the idea of cultural assimilation. In 1994 he published a book on the subject entitled Sur la Nouvelle Droite. It is untranslated. Some of his writings on the New Right have also appeared in the American journal Telos.
[78]Jean-Luc Godard (1930- ) is an experimental filmmaker best known for his association with the French New Wave in cinema during the 1950s and ‘60s. He has always been deeply distrustful of Hollywood.
[79] Luc Besson (1959- ) is a French filmmaker who has produced films both in France and the U.S. Among his works is the 1997 science fiction film The Fifth Element.
[80] Paul d’Ivoi (1856-1915) was one of the first authors of science fiction in France. His work is untranslated.
[81] René Barjavel (1911-1985) was a French writer best known for his science fiction. He is credited with inventing the ‘grandfather paradox’, which speculates about the consequences of a time traveller going back in time and killing his own grandfather before he himself is born, in Le Voyageur imprudent (translated as Future Times Three).
[82] Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) was an American writer best known for his science fiction, which often explored the philosophical problems of reality vs. Illusion. He is widely regarded as having been one of the great American authors of the Twentieth century.
[83] Molière (1622-1673) was the stage name of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, a French playwright who is regarded as one of the masters of comedy.
[84]These are the buildings for the regional administrations, which have been criticized for being too luxurious.
[85]The Lovers on the Bridge was a 1991 film directed by Leos Carax. Set around a public bridge in the centre of Paris, the production was forced to build a replica of the bridge in another location when one of the leading actors sustained an injury and filming at the actual bridge went beyond the time allotted. The additional funding provided to allow filming to be completed ended up being insufficient, and production was again shut down until new financiers could be found. After receiving 30 million francs, the film again ran over its budget and was again shut down. It ended up costing another 70 million to finish, with a total cost of well over 100 million francs in total for the entire production.
[86] Jack Lang (1939- ) is a French politician of the Socialist Party. Between 1988 and 1992 he was Minister of Culture. He currently serves in the National Assembly.
[87] Jean-Paul Belmondo (1933- ) is a French actor who appeared in many of the most notable films of the French New Wave, particularly Godard’s Breathless.
[88] Jean de La Font
aine (1621-1695) was a Seventeenth century French poet.
[89] Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was a prolific French novelist, regarded as one of the founders of Realism.
[90] The Bretons are an ethnic group native to the Brittany region of France who originally came from Great Britain between the Fourth and Sixth centuries.
[91] Michel Maffesoli (1944- ) is a French sociologist. The book has been translated as The Shadow of Dionysus (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993). Maffesoli views orgiasm as a healthy thing for modern society, asserting that a ‘city, a people, or a more or less limited group of individuals who cannot succeed in expressing collectively their wildness, their madness, and their imaginary, rapidly destructure themselves and, as Spinoza noted, these people merit more than any “the name of solitude”’ (p. 8).
[92]Sunday’s Newspaper, a weekly news magazine.
[93] ‘Grief and Shame’.
[94] Tony Antrella (1941- ) has never been translated into English. He continues to advance the thesis that homosexuality is a psychological aberration that requires treatment.
[95] Latin: ‘Thus passes the glory of imbeciles.’
[96] Chevènement (see also chapter 1, note 15) was initially a member of the Socialist Party who left it in 1993 due to his opposition to the Persian Gulf War and the Maastricht Treaty which created the Euro. He then founded the Citizens’ Movement. He was Minister of the Interior in 1998. He is known for frequently resigning for ideological reasons, a rare phenomenon in French politics, and for his strong opposition to the European Union. He is currently a Senator.
[97] Kempf (1957- ) is a writer on science who has been the Environmental Editor for Le Monde since 1998.
[98] French: ‘end of the century’. In addition to its literal meaning, it also has connotations of belonging to an age of degeneracy and opulence that comes about as one age is ending, just prior to the birth of a new age. Much of French literature and art from the Nineteenth century, particularly of the Symbolist movement, is referred to by this name.
[99] Emmanuel Lévinas (1906-1995) was a Lithuanian Jewish-born philosopher who had a large impact on the development of postmodern philosophy. Among his ideas, he held that ethical responsibility must come prior to the attempt to understand the truth.
[100] Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) was a French psychoanalyst whose work had an immense impact on structuralism, and then postmodern philosophy. He frequently cited scientific and mathematical evidence to support his ideas, although professional scientists and mathematicians have said that his evidence is nonsense.
[101] Alan Sokal (1955- ) is an American physicist who is infamous for having submitted a paper to the postmodernist journal Social Text in which he claimed that recent discoveries in quantum physics proved aspects of postmodern philosophy. The science he used to support this was bogus, but Sokal believed that the editors would print it without verifying it since it flattered their preconceptions. Sure enough, the article was published in 1996, and Sokal exposed the hoax after it appeared. This generated a great deal of debate over the value of postmodernism, its attempted use of science to support its theories, and the state of the humanities in general.
[102] Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Intellectual Impostures: Postmodern Philosophers’ Misuse of Science (London: Profile, 1998) was the first of a series of books that Sokal wrote about the controversy. It was published in the U.S. under the title Fashionable Nonsense.
[103]The Echo of the Savannah is a comics magazine for adults.
[104] This hoax was perpetrated by the writer Roland Dorgelès in 1910.
[105] Jean-Marc Vivenza (1957- ) is a philosopher and musicologist with an esoteric bent, having studied Guénon. His bruit is a form of industrial music, called noise music in English.
[106] Deleuze maintains a Web site of her work at www.deleuze-peintre.com.
[107]Yann-Ber Tillenon was part of GRECE but left at the same time as Faye. He remains active in the Right alongside Faye.
[108] Pécuchet is a character in a novel by Gustav Flaubert, published in 1881: Bouvard et Pécuchet. The two title characters are office clerks who become friends and, out of their shared enthusiasm for learning, attempt to master all of the various branches of knowledge. All of their efforts are unsuccessful.
[109]Technè is the method involved in creating an object or in accomplishing a goal.
[110] Greek: ‘thing’.
[111] César Manrique (1919-1992) was a Spanish artist. Among his works were collections of compressed car parts, including some from Renaults. He died in a car accident.
[112] Andrea Pininfarina (1957-2008) ran an Italian car body firm of the same name. He died in a car accident.
[113] International Fair of Contemporary Art. Paris has been hosting this fair every October since 1974.
[114] Especially in his book On Television and Journalism (London: Pluto Press, 1998).
[115] ‘Master for thinking’. Less literally, it implies any teacher from whom one develops a particular way of thinking.
[116] The Most Reverend Dr. Jacques Jean Edmond Georges Monseigneur Gaillot (1935- ) is a former Catholic bishop nicknamed ‘The Red Cleric’ because of his extreme Leftist positions. He was removed from his position by the Vatican in 1995 for publicly opposing several of the Church’s precepts.
[117] Argot is any language which is used by a particular subculture, such as criminals, in order to prevent outsiders from understanding what they’re saying.
[118] Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française, which was the agency which ran public radio and television in France between 1964 and 1974.
[119] Poivre was a well-known TV journalist in France for more than 30 years. He was fired in 2008 after defamation charges were filed against him.
[120] Canal+ is a French pay television channel.
[121] Newt Gingrich (1943- ), a U.S. Republican Congressman from Georgia who is best-known for his role in leading the so-called ‘Republican Revolution’ in the 1994 mid-term election, and for his role as Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1995 until 1999. He is still a noted conservative commentator in the U.S.
[122] Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the National Socialist or Nazi Party.
[123] The Republican Front was a coalition of both Left- and Right-wing parties put together with the express purpose of keeping the Front National out of power.
[124] Charles Millon (1945- ) was a member of the centrist Union for French Democracy (UDF), and served as Minister of Defence from 1995 until 1997. He was also the President of the Rhône-Alpes Regional Council. In 1998, faced with defeat as President in the election, he agreed to accept the votes of the Front National, although this led to him being expelled from the UDF. He currently holds no office.
[125] Louis Mermaz (1931- ) is a politician of the Socialist Party.
[126]The Confession is a 1970 French-Italian film based on a true story about a Czech Communist official who was arrested and then brainwashed into confessing to crimes that he didn’t commit.
[127] Cheb Mami, the stage name of Ahmed Khelifati Mohamed, is a popular Algerian raï singer. In 2009 he was imprisoned for drugging his girlfriend in an effort to force her to have an abortion.
[128] Veblen (1857-1929) was a prominent American economist and sociologist. He is best known for his 1899 book The Theory of the Leisure Class, in which he postulated that the emerging upper class of modern society was unique in that it contributed little toward the maintenance or advancement of civilisation.
[129] Vilfredo Pareto (1844-1923) was an Italian sociologist whose theories were highly influential upon Italian Fascism. His principal work is The Mind and Society (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1935).
[130] George Steiner (1929- ) is a prominent literary and cultural critic based in America.
[131] Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was a German-Jewish Marxist intellectual who was part of the Frankfurt School. Faye is undoubtedly referencing Benjamin’s famous essay, ‘The
Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, although he is mistaken as it doesn’t deal with American television since it was written in 1935, long before the TV explosion of the 1950s. However, it is certainly relevant to the TV phenomenon, since Benjamin predicted that art in the machine age, divorced from the traditions of other forms of art, would be unable to communicate any meaning apart from the political.
[132] The Superphénix plant operated from 1985 until 1997, when it was shut down due to popular opposition. It was subjected to a rocket attack by eco-terrorists while still under construction in 1982.
[133] NTM, a French hip-hop band, is well-known in France for its opposition to racism and class divisions.
Archeofuturism Page 23
